2015 was amazing for me. After writing almost continuously since I was thirteen, I finally finished something and had a story published. I then wrote another for self publishing. Plus I was twenty thousand words into a novel, had another short ready for editing and two more half way through a draft.

That's where the trouble started :)

Here's how it worked for me and for all I know, every writer at some time or another.

I wrote The Essence of Jamie's Father and left a lot of loose ends, but it was fine, I had answers to all of the problems and in most cases, they were documented. Great. The story was to be published in Sept 2015 and so I realy wanted a second story in this universe ready for publication. I quickly jotted down the timeline, the potential stories and picked the one that was most fuly formed (and piqued my interest).

The Conversion of Jamies Father was written between June and August 2015.

My wife spent the summer studying and sat her exams in September. My summer had been a nightmare at work and the stress was unsustainable. We were all exhausted and so I took the month off from writing. By mid October I was dying to get back into it and when my son started back at Orchestra - my one definite writing time in the week on Saturday mornings, I kicked off another story. I loved it, but by the end of October, it seemed like a better idea to nail down the entire timeline and stories.

To cut a very long story short, this resulted in me having to drop the story (sob!) I was writing, two new stories appearing and finding several more problems with the overall story (which may have to result in changes to the Jamie story - arrrgggh).

I began working on both of those new stories at the same time and then a third appeared before Christmas which kindof knocked all of the stories around a bit. Then December got a bit stressful again and I called another halt.

It was in January when I started considering what all of this meant. How does the writing process work?

When I started my novel, I had the whole timeline pretty much clear from the start. It was a great story for NaNo because I could just pour it out. Not so with the Essence stories. They all seem to conflict with each other. All of the characters motivations are at odds (not a bad thing) too. But overall, I have to admit, Jon Fraters summation of the Jamie story - Gut Wrenchingly Bleak - seemed to be true. It became more and more difficult to sort out the stories, because they seemed to be getting more and more bleak. Where was the light in this tunnel? Can there be a light when you are dealing with a subject like immortality?

I can't answer that question. It is up to the readers. Maybe no-one will read these stories to even make up their mind about them. I don't know.

The good news is that I will have more time to write for the rest of February and March. I've spent this entire weekend (20/21st) sorting out the timeline and nailing down everything that happens after the Jamie story. I am now more optimistic.

I just can't let this story go.

And I'm writing a blog about that to get it off my chest too.

A lot of writing seems to be about getting things off ones chest. :)

The cover for the Jamie story will now be used for all the stories from "Jamie" onwards in the timeline. They will al be collected when there is a conclusion with the same cover.

The cover for "Conversion" onwards, will be used for all stories taking place before the "Jamie" story, and will be collected using that cover in the future.